Week of February 6, 2017

A cluster of students working hard on their Climate Tour posters during Science.

Highlights from Last Week:

Climate Tours: This week students finished up their Climate Tour projects. Each student chose three destinations around the world to visit, each with a different climate. After researching their chosen climates and what causes each climate, students created posters to share what they learned. Students "traveled" everywhere, from the ice caps in the north pole to arid desert in Australia.

Greek and Latin Root Word Game: On Friday we started a fun vocabulary game to help students develop an understanding of Greek and Latin root words. Given a root, student teams had to come up with a unique vocabulary word build from that root. We'll play round 2, the Jeopardy portion, this week.

Behavior Expectations: We had to spend some time this week as a class discussing behavior. Negativity, calling out, belittling peers, attention-seeking, lackluster listening, and distracting actions of some students have been getting in the way of teaching and learning for all. We identified that it's a problem and promised to grow and improve as a group. 

Student Satisfaction Survey: Students took an anonymous survey that I created to gauge their satisfaction with the school year so far. I got some really helpful feedback from students on where my strengths are and about areas that could use improvement. As a class, we discussed the results, giving students an opportunity to analyze graphs. Overall, most students are very satisfied with how fifth grade is going.

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What We Didn't Get To:
A lot. We got bogged down this week with unwanted behavior issues, but also our Climate Tour project took a lot longer than anticipated. Here is a list of things that we didn't get to:

• Equivalent fractions and adding fractions. Instead we spent extra time on finding fractions of sets and an open response.
• Informational text structures and implicit//explicit meaning took a backseat to text features, which we wrote about in an in-class reading response.
• Measuring weather. 
• Colonial America.

This Week's Plan


Upcoming Special Events: ​​​

• Early Release Wednesday.

Special Activities:

• Homework Project Shares: Students will share their Global Citizenship Part 1 projects.

Math:
Fraction Addition and Subtraction.

• Equivalent Fractions --I have a fun game to practice making equivalent fractions.
• Comparing and Ordering Fractions --I also have a fun game for this!
• Adding and Subtracting Fractions --We'll learn the steps to add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators, then practice simplifying our answers.

Reading:
Book Groups. Informational Text Reading.

• Book Groups --Students continue their book group work on summarizing, questioning, critically thinking, and discussing.
• Structure Informational Text --We'll look at a variety of ways to structure informational texts, such as topic/detail, compare/contrast, cause/effect, and sequence/narrative.
• Explicit and Implicit Meaning  --Students will find evidence and use quotes accurately to support their thinking about what the text says and means.

Writing:
Continue Spelling and Vocabulary.​

• Vocabulary --We'll look at common Greek and Latin root words through a fun game and Jeopardy.
• On-Demand Research --I will ask students to choose a topic to write an on-demand informational text about. First, I will observe how students conduct research on the topic.
• On-Demand Informational Writing --After students conduct research, they will write a short informational piece about their chosen topic. This will help me know what to focus on in our Informational Writing unit.
• Strategies for Choosing a Topic and Taking Notes ​--We'll learn how to using questioning to develop an informational topic with a specific focus. We'll also learn about a notetaking strategy I call "categories," where students organize notes based on overarching topic categories.

Social Studies:
Colonial America.
I'll introduce Colonial America through a read aloud of A History of US by Joy Hakim and other texts. We'll use our informational reading skills to practice finding explicit and implicit meaning. We'll explore answers to the following questions:

• What is colonization and why do people colonize?
• What were the first colonies of America like?

Science:
Finish Weather and Climate. ​

• Measuring Weather: We'll explore some old-fashioned instruments used to measure weather.
• Weather and Climate Assessment: Students will show their understanding of weather and climate on an assessment built from former Science MCAS questions.
  

Homework:
Please check the Homework page for more details.

1. Students finish their "Global Citizenship Part 1" and turn it in by Wednesday.
2. Students will receive a partner to respond to on the Reading Response Blog. Students must write about their partner's blog by Friday.
3. Read 25 minutes at home per day and log the title, author, and time in the planner.
4. There will be a math page for homework each night.

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Thanks for Reading!
That's the plan for the week. Please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or feedback.